Schreierstoren (4)

Centuries ago, this tower bore witness to the return of pioneering adventurers who had been lost on faraway oceans for months or years. It also, however, bore testimony to the departure of many a sailor, who went to sea in search of fortune and an uncertain fate.

The wives of these sailors climbed to the top of the tower to see them depart and burst into tears when they disappeared over the horizon.

The name of this building, the Weeper’s Tower, thus expresses both love and loss.

That is the Romantic version but there is another more mundane explanation of where the tower really gets its name from, which has curiously arisen from a misinterpretation of the name in the original Dutch.

Schreyhoeckstoren (rather than Schreierstoren, which is its current name) meant something like sharp or pronounced angle, in reference to the angle of the tower and the walls connected to it.

Having heard the two versions, imagine that the current site of the Station Central was once the place from which caravels departed and choose the story you prefer.

This small brick semicircular tower, which was built around 1480, is a vestige of the old wall and is currently home to a small café where hen parties are occasionally held. In a place where centuries ago spouses bade farewell to their husbands in the knowledge that they would perhaps see them no more, it is therefore amusing that today it is the future wives who should be bidding farewell to their single status, as they will shortly meet their husbands at the altar.